Sunday, September 13, 2009

More on the Warhol Theft

Carol Vogel and Solomon Moore have more in today's New York Times on last week's Los Angeles Warhol theft. The collector is offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the paintings' recovery. They quote Tobias Meyer of Sotheby’s as saying: "Stealing Warhols is a very bad idea. The art world has become so transparent, and all these works are so traceable, ultimately they become an untradeable asset."

"The most probable outcome of this situation is that a 'well-meaning' informant will call in a lead that will bring police to the stolen art.Once the art is recovered, the good samaritan will be paid the reward.Likely in cases such as this, the call that leads to the recovery of the art will come from a colleague of the thieves.The reward will therefore be distributed among the thieves via the informant.For a few hours’ legwork, the thieves will have stolen art, abandoned it, had a colleague call in the location to the police, retrieve the reward, and pocket it."